Enterprise software can manage, record, and facilitate transactions in an enterprise system. Components of enterprise software can be distributed between hardware devices and virtual environments, as well as across geographic locations. Some enterprise software is designed for reuse, and contains components that are designed to meet general business needs.
One or more devices in a system can be involved in gathering, generating, processing, and storing transactional information. For example, the sales documentation, customer files and accounting records of an organization are handled at least in part by one or more transactional applications in a transactional system.
The transactional information can be used to generate one or more reports, which are generally targeted to a specific group (e.g., executive sales reports are intended for persons in the company's management). Sometimes an analytical system is used in conjunction with the transactional system(s), wherein transactional data is forwarded to (or obtained by) the analytical system and used in compiling the report(s).